Garen naturally would not let Kentucky take up some job as a fried chicken chef, much less actually have Kentucky help him develop anti-human biological weapons.
To avoid wasting the scientist's value, Garen assigned Kentucky a research task he had never expected:
Researching methods for large-scale helium production.
Kentucky, who specialized in biochemistry, found Garen's amateur attempt to direct an expert rather troubling.
But a man had to bow his head under another's roof, so Kentucky gritted his teeth and accepted this baffling research assignment.
Kentucky found it baffling because helium had almost no applications in this world, and no one had ever put much effort into studying such an unfamiliar gas.
But Garen knew the immense role this gas could play:
Inflation—filling airships with gas.
As the saying went, "If you wanted prosperity, build the roads first." Changes in transportation could affect an entire generation's way of life and, just as subtly, reshape the whole world's balance.
The natural geographic barriers of the Red Line and the Calm Belt severely restricted this world's maritime transportation.
Marine researchers had spent a fortune developing Sea Stone Warships, allowing the elite forces of Marine Headquarters to ignore the dangers of the Calm Belt and move rapidly between the Grand Line and the four seas.
But after seeing how severely limited maritime travel was, Garen's first thought was:
Why not take to the skies?
In a world that could build robots, there was no reason it could not build airplanes and airships.
Compared to airplanes, airships cost less, were simpler to manufacture, had greater cargo capacity and endurance, and their mobility could crush any ship currently sailing the seas.
As long as airships existed, the Calm Belt and the Grand Line would no longer be barriers, while pirates accustomed to robbing people at